13. Metallica- Ride the Lightning(1984)- Rock/Metal Album Track Ranking Series

The almighty Metallica is the second band(after Black Sabbath) to be featured for the second time in my ranking series with- you guessed- its second album, Ride the Lightning, so here is how I rate and rank the tracks from this legendary record:

8. Escape- 7.5(Good)

7. Trapped under Ice- 8(Solid)

6. The Call of Ktulu- 8.5(Very Good)

5. Fade to Black- 9.5(Fantastic)

4. For Whom the Bell Tolls- 9.5

3. Ride the Lightning- 9.5

2. Fight Fire with Fire- 10(Stellar)

1. Creeping Death- 10

OVERALL RATING: 9.06

Once again, the difference between the top 5 tracks on this super album is extremely small for me, but it appears that Creeping Death has wom the battle for my favourite track not only from Ride the Lightning, but- spoiler alert- from the entire Metallica catalogue. How could I not adore such a monstruos track with incredible riffs, a great bridge, fabulous guitar solos and deep biblically-related lyrics? This track has it all, so at least for the time being it has no challenger for the position of greatest Metallica track!

The positions from 2 to 5 have constantly switched throughout the years. Fight Fire with Fire currently occupies the honourable second place thanks to its sheer ferocity and breakneck speed, it's definitely the heaviest song on an already really heavy record! 

The title track takes the bronze medal, followed closely by the hits For Whom the Bell Tolls and Fade to Black. There's so much greatness în. these tunes that I feel tempted to rank'em all in 3rd place, but there has to be a separation, and the fact is enjoy Ride the Lightning slightly more than the other two tracks due to its Foster tempo, remarkable chorus and the fantastic guitar parts from the second half of the song.

As for the other 3 songs, I can briefly say that The Call of Ktulu is a cool instrumental, Trapped under Ice a solid, fast-paced thrasher, and Escape is a pretty good track as well, so obviously there are no skippable moments on Ride the Lightning.

So, is RTL my favourite Metallica record? Its overall rating of 9.06 place it incredibly close ahead of Kill'em All, which has 9.05, so basically they are equal for me, but there are a still a couple of top notch albums to be ranked in the nearby future(it's easy to guess which ones)  so after rating and ranking them as well I will have a clear picture of my favourite Metallica records.

To sum it all up, Ride the Lightning is a superb album, showing the prowess of a young band destined to conquer the world, a record I will never ever stop listening to with immense pleasure!

7. Megadeth- Rust in Peace(1990)- Rock/Metal Album Track Ranking Series

One of the big four of thrash metal, the unmistakable Megadeth, makes its debut in my series with its 4th studio album, 'Rust in Peace', so let's see how I ranked and rated its 9 tracks:

9. Dawn Patrol- 7.5(good)

8. Poison Was the Cure- 8(solid)

7. Lucretia- 9.5(fantastic)

6. Take No Prisoners- 9.5

5. Hangar 18- 9.5

4. Five Magics- 9.5

3. Rust in Peace... Polaris- 9.5

2. Tornado of Souls- 10(stellar)

1. Holy Wars... the Punishment Due-10

OVERALL RATING- 9.22

Religios, nuclear threat, warfare, alien conspiracies, and Dave Mustaine's personal struggles create the picture of an album loaded with excepțional tracks, so ranking them was no walk in the park for me.

"Holy Wars... the Punisment Due" with its monster riff, challenging lyrics about religious conflict and technical wizardry takes the winning spot followed very closely by "Tornado of Souls", another outstanding work of art with a remarkable riff, incredible guitar solo and great melody and chorus. Actually, these two songs are my favourite of the entire Megadeth catalogue, and the fact that they are both from "Rust in Peace" says almost all you need to know about how much I love this album.

Ranking most of the other tracks was also a daunting task as I could use a lot of epithetes about them as well, so positions 3-7 are interchangeable. "Rust in Peace...Polaris", with its powerful riffing and lyrics about nuclear warfare that are as relevant today as they were in 1990, takes the 3rd place by an extremely narrow margin, but the fast and furious pace of "Take No Prisoners", the fantastic twin guitarwork of "Hangar 18", the sonic assault of "Five Magics", and the slightly playfully, but equally great banger"Lucretia"  are also serious contenders for that position.

"Dawn Patrol", although not bad, is somewhat weird compared with the rest of the album, but I can accept it as a way for the listener to slow down a bit before finishing the album in great style with "Rust in Peace...Polaris." Because of this track the album's overall rating dropsuri down a little to 9.22, which is still the highest rating of the seven albums analize so far, and I dare predict that it will stay in that honorable leading position for quite a while, as this is undoubtedly one of my favourite albums of all time. 

"Rust in Peace" can definitely be chara terized as a staple of thrash metal. It is Megadeth at its finest, showing its classical line-up(Dave Mustaine, David Ellefson, Marty Friedman and Nick Menza) at the peak of its creativity as it invites the listeners to embark on a thrilling journey full of musical prowess and thought-provoking lyrics. It's a thrash metal masterpiece that you could listen to again and again and still find something new to enjoy!

Ranking Rock/Metal Albums: #4. Metallica- Kill'em All(1983)

My rock/metal album ranking/rating series continues with the debut of no other than the biggest band of the planet, Metallica, so here comes my track ranking and rating:

 10. (Anesthesia)- Pulling Teeth- 8(solid)

    9. Phantom Lord- 8

    8. Hit The Lights- 8.5(very good)

    7. Metal Militia- 9(great)

    6. Jump in the Fire- 9

    5. Motorbreath- 9

    4. Seek & Destroy- 9.5(fantastic)

    3. The Four Horsemen- 9.5

    2. No Remorse- 10(stellar)

    1. Whiplash- 10

    OVERALL RATING: 9.05

    The fourth album in my series is also the first one with no song whose rating goes lower than 8, which says a lot about how much I love this album.

    The breakneck pace and crushing inensity of 'Whiplash' have made it my favorite track, although 'No Remorse', with its incredible riffs, outstanding soros and great chorus is also a strong candidate for the first place, and the epicness of 'The Four Horsemen', another absolute banger, has installed it in third position, ahead if mid tempo, anthemic rockers like 'Seek & Destroy' and 'Jump in the Fire'. Anyway, no weak track whatsoever, so my ranking can change at any time, and lower placed tunes can also advance in my hierarchy in the future.

'Kill'em All', with its raw, fierce sound and sheer, youthful energy, remains an essential  album, whose influence on the growth of speed and thrash metal is massive. It will always have its place in my playlists and my heart!

A Look at My Spotify Stats for 2020

 

2020 has been an awful year for me, not necessarily because of the Coronavirus pandemic, but mostly because I lost someone very dear to me, so in these times the moral support and boost I got from listening to my favorite types of music, hard rock and metal, has been essential in helping me cope with the huge sadness and grief I went through. Heavy metal was here for me in my darkest moments of 2020 and will undoubtedly stay with me for as long as I live!

As for my listening stats for 2020, I have to say that the mail sent to me by Spotify in early December, which presents a short review of my listening habits for this cursed year, does not reflect the whole picture, because I also use Youtube Music for my auditions, therefore I can have an accurate picture of my 2020 year in music by consulting my stats on Last.fm, which I'm going to do in a future post, so for this article, I will only take a brief look at my Spotify 2020 wrapped and draw a few conclusions based on it.

1. MY TOP BAND- OVERKILL

Last year they were in second place, but thanks to their fabulous 2019 release 'The Wings of War' which also made me feel like listening to some of their older and great stuff more frequently in 2020,  the thrash metal veterans from New Jersey took the top spot. They fully deserve to be in this position because they're one of those few bands which sound better as they advance in age. To me Overkill sounds as fresh as energetic as they were 3 decades ago, and their latest album is absolutely stunning. As you can see, 'Where Few Dare to Walk' is my favourite songs from 'The Wings of War', but really all the songs from this album are at least very good, if not great. I think that, out of all the bands which put thrash metal on the map in the 80s, Overkill is the most enduring and consistent, as they have a remarkable catalog of 19 studio albums, some of them being truly fantastic, such as their latest one!

2. MY TOP 5 BANDS- ONLY CLASSICS HERE

Spotify is not very detailed in terms of stats, so it only offered me a top 5 of my favorite bands from 2020, just like it did last year. The first thing I can say about this Top 5 is that thrash metal heavyweights took the lead this year, replacing traditional heavy metal classics like Judas Priest(last year's winners) and Iron Maiden, which are probably still in my top 10, but Spotify doesn't bother showing us too much, as unfortunately, it doesn't show our top albums either. Anyway, the presence of symphonic metal veterans Therion in this chart shows that there is some variety in the metal I usually listen to, but nothing can beat thrash in my musical world for the time being. 

3. MY TOP 5 GENRES- PRETTY AMBIGUOUS HERE

Speaking of less accurate stats, this is where Spotify really is at its worst. I mean, of course, metal and rock are my favorite types of music, but what kind of metal and what kind of rock? I suppose thrash metal and traditional heavy metal, maybe hard rock would replace metal and rock if Spotify did a better job. Anyway, no surprises here as I love power metal and thrash metal is mentioned here in the form of the new wave,thanks to bands like Havok and Warbringer which in my opinion are at least as good as the old boys of thrash, and they will keep on growing in quality!

4. MY TOP 5 SONGS- WARBRINGER TAKES THE GOLD MEDAL

Speaking of Warbringer, they are the winners of my Top Songs category, not with a track from their latest release, which is truly great, but with fabulous songs from their previous album, 'Voe to the Vanquished.' The track 'Remain Violent' is one of the tunes I found repeatedly on the daily mixes made by Spotify based on my preferences, and I found it so damn catchy that I played it on repeat several times, which I don't do with many songs. Anyway, two more thunderous thrashers from Kreator and Overkill, a power metal tune full of hooks and an unbelievably catchy chorus from German band Orden Organ and a more melancholic track, a semi-ballad from the one and only Motorhead made me my top 5, but of course, this was a close call, and these are not necessarily my favorite tunes at the moments, they're just the ones I played most frequently.

 5. MY TOP DECADE- THE 90S

I cannot put an end to this article without mentioning that my favorite decade of 2020 was the 90s according to Spotify, and the aforementioned "Love Me Forever" by Motorhead was my top song from that decade. This doesn't mean that I like the music of the 90s more than other decades, but those were the years in which I discovered hard rock and metal and it isn't a surprise that I have some feelings of nostalgia about that decade, and that is probably why I listen to the music of that decade quite often. 

6. MY TOP PODCAST- THE HEAVY METAL HANGOVER

2020 was the year in this I started listening to podcasts on Spotify and, even if I tried to listen to shows related to a variety of topics, heavy metal was my first choice, and after trying several podcasts, I found one which I truly love- The Heavy Metal Hangover. I was captivated by the discussions between the two hosts, Chris and Jay, as soon as I started listening to the first episode in that series, and I kept on listening to them for several months as the podcast started in 2018 and I had many episodes to discover. It's highly entertaining and truly interesting to the hosts analyzing metal in its multiple aspects, and I can never get bored listening to them, so this is by far my favorite podcast on Spotify for the time being.

                                  

💀💀💀

That was my short analysis of my Spotify year wrapped. 2020 was full of sadness and misfortunes for me, as it was probably for a lot of people, but listening to heavy metal helped me a lot and I know that it is here to stay and make life more exciting and more pleasant for years to come. Long live heavy metal!